Yesterday a poll came out measuring support levels of the last several presidents at this point in their tenure divided by Republican and Democratic support. This makes a really interesting point about the obsessive hidebound ideology of many of today's Republicans, so read on.

The headline that Pew, the polling firm, put on the results was: Partisan Gap in Obama Job Approval Widest in Modern Era. That is, Obama's overall support is put at 59% (lower than most others, by the way). He's being supported by 88% of Dems, 57% of Inds, and 27% of Reps. That's an "R-D differential" of -61.

Two points. First, partisanship has increased in general since the 1970s. Nixon's score was +29 and Carter's -25, meaning that fairly healthy chunks of survey respondents from the opposite party supported each early in their tenures (majorities, in fact). Things inched down when Reagan hit town, sliding eventually to our circumstance of the last few years.

Second, though, we see that Republicans are more withholding than Democrats. Democratic poll respondents supported even GW Bush by 10% higher than Republicans supported Obama or Clinton. This reflects of course how intensely and ideologically angry most Republicans have become. Here, in the case of Obama, you have a president who has actually tried to reach out. He gets the back of the hand.

When I read this, I thought to myself: the next logical step here is that Republicans, who have themselves created this ludicrous result with their incessant and demagogic Limbaughism and such, are going to point to this result to say it "proves" that Obama is polarizing. And sure enough, Greg Sargent reported yesterday:

Former Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner pointed to the numbers to slam Obama as the "most polarizing" President in decades and to blast Obama's promise of bipartisanship as "fictional." Drudge branded Obama "President Polarize," and many others on the right echoed the charge.

Sargent called up Pew and got this dose of sanity:

Pew associate director [Michael] Dimock, however, says this is a misreading of the poll. Dimock says the divide is driven by long term trends and by the uncommonly enthusiastic reaction to Obama by members of his own party — by what he calls "the way Democrats are reacting to Obama." Interestingly, Dimock also said this phenomenon is partly caused by the recent tendency of Republicans to be less charitable towards new residents than Dems have been.

In contrast to the 27% of GOPers approving of Obama now, more than a third of Dems (36%) approved of George W. Bush at a comparable time in 2001. Before that, only 26% of Republicans approved of Bill Clinton at the same time in his presidency, while 41% of Dems approved of both George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan at comparable times.Dimock, who said that the sheer scale of Obama's agenda could be hurting Obama among GOPers, claimed that the willingness to give the incoming President the benefit of the doubt hasn't been "as prevalent among Republicans."

Sometimes it's just incredible to me that we have to take these people seriously.